Jimmy Island
by coeur de lyon
Summary: Tenten gets very rambly when she's dying. Neji, naturally, wants for her to shut up. NejixTenten oneshot with uncertain consequences and a dash of drama.


Warnings for: Swearing. Some gore. Ramblyness. Character Death?

A/N: I'm getting this sense that something about it is a bit off, and would like to fix that, and have no beta… It's a bit top heavy, right? And sure, that was in part deliberate (changes of style etc are too... phonetics are the way they are because I have an antipodean accent, and as such I pronounce certain words a bit whack, also), but I don't want to do that to the extent that it doesn't jive well. So critique would be awesome.

Disclaimer: Honestly? I'm so poor it's a struggle for me to afford to travel to school in the morning, and come home at night. I'm not kidding. If I _had_ enough money to buy the rights, I'd naturally spend it on other, more pressing things.

**_Jimmy Island_**

_Gare de Lyon_

The sky is so bright and clear it's nearly white, and it's just lucky that the sun is veiled by clouds that are silver with water, or else he (her teammate. Her best friend) might have been dazzled, might have lost.

The earth around him, though, is just a big black crater of churned mud and fallen foes and the only thing wrong that she can see is that there's a cut down his side, because it's seeping through the white shirt he wears, staining it that most vibrant ruby colour; but he's standing, and is still, and has won, and is safe. She wants to tell him that salt will bring it out, the blood. Once it's clean. But she can't seem to form the words. She thinks that that might have something to do with the porcelain embedded in her mouth, but that's really only an aside.

It's because the sky is _white_ and the earth is black, and (below her, at least) soft and crumbly and alluvial (which is a strange, pretty word that rolls through her mind easily… _Alluvial_), and because the air is so thin and cold it hurts her lungs to draw it in, in the big deep breaths that Tenten loves to breathe best (though that too could be attributed to other things), and because she is dying steadily and the thought that runs through her mind (more than Neji and his stains, and the shards in her lips and the blood they're bleeding, and the word alluvial) is that it's really good weather for it.

A veritably beautiful day to die.

Oh, and now Neji is turning, and she sees that he's already begun to heal himself because the red has stopped and he has _so much_ more chakra than she does, and it's flaring blue around his chest, and she's so _proud_ that he's so strong, and is surprised at the same time that she can see the chakra running in silvery threads through his body; and on top of the realisation that she is _actually dying_ is the realisation that he's actually the most beautiful creature she's ever seen. And that as his eyes widen and the silver around them grows deeper, shines more strongly, she wants to tell him so.

It's a beautiful day to die: and Neji, you are beautiful; and alluvial is a pretty word – and did you know?

She can taste the blood on her lips, vibrantly ruby red and salty (and she doesn't like salt), and she guesses it tastes worse than usual because her sense of feeling has vanished, because she's _badly_ injured, and the adrenalin of her fight has given way to shock ever since she fell from the sky and landed wrong and too fast and her weapons rained down on her and in her and around her, and her sense of feeling has vanished and her other ones have become that much stronger as a result. She knows that that in itself is a warning sign, and that's why she's lying down still, and can't see how badly injured she is, except that there are shuriken and kunai hilts sticking out of her like pins in a pincushion, and why her shallow breathing seems as loud as a firecracker, and why she can smell, so clearly, the sour sweaty smell of the nin she somehow managed to kill even as she fell nearby, and the fragrant tangerine smell of the soap she washed her hair with, this morning, before she left the village with her team and was ambushed.

And now she's thinking in absolutes, and that's silly, because it's not as though that's how she usually thinks, because absolutes and ultimates are what she tries to get Neji to stop doing, and this is making her one hell of a hypocrite – and she shouldn't be concentrating on that anyway, because she needs to not die and she has a sneaking suspicion (who's suspicions _don't_ sneak though?) that she needs to focus on living, to do it now.

Problem is, as soon as things go wrong, Tenten gets sidetracked, as easily as pie. It's a residual trace of her childhood (Tenten was the kid who used to run away. Konoha is named aptly, after all. For an academy child, in the strongest hidden village, whom no one really cares about anyway, there was always somewhere to go to, to hide, to vanish), the flight instinct, which makes her a good shinobi and a bad(ish) person. It _is_ a bad habit, like the way she relies on paper wings to fly and to win, and the way she leaves herself so ridiculously open to an attack up there, to being completely thrown off balance by a clever enemy, the way she was.

But seeing Neji kneeling over her, his eyes wide and silver with water and staring at her alone, and knowing that his hair is spilling down around them like a curtain makes her inevitably forget about the fight she won and lost so badly, even as it annoys her, a bit. He's shining and beautiful, and her mask has smashed because of the kunai that hit it but didn't kill her, but left her face cut up and bloody and chalky from the blood loss, and she doesn't want there to be such a vast difference as that between them, so she licks her lips and more blood trickles down her throat, and there's something gritty in her mouth and she realises it's clay, and realises that it uses up too much strength, more than she has, to point up at his glowing self, while he's desperately pulling off the remains of her mask; but that she _can_ cut through his rambles (oh no! tenten! stay still, oh no, don't move, oh god, you're going to be fine, god, just let me – I can heal this, stay here oh god oh god don't – don't – ) to tell him that he never told her.

"You never told me…"

She knows she swallowed blood, but she didn't think she'd swallowed _that_ much, not enough that she'd be able to feel it gurgling up the back of her throat.

"No – I – I was – "

_How beautiful it is, Chakra_ she means to add, but what he says in between, and how he says it (silver voiced, heavy with water) sidetracks her. She realises. He's running gentle fingers over her face, trying to stem the blood running out of her in rivulets, and her voice sounds weird, even to her own ears. _I sound sad_, she realises. And _I am sad._

"Neji?" he falls abruptly silent, and she finds can't handle his reticence right now. "Can you just say?" Not with her body bleeding out, even though she _stayed still_ and it occurs to her that life doesn't ever take a break from being a bitch sometimes.

She watches as the silver in him flickers down to his hands, and he moves his hands (one has strayed into her hair, one to her pulse…she thinks) and sends out a soaring blue flare up into the sky (and she wonders why they ever chose _blue_ for their distress colour. Red would have been better, she thinks...) to let whoever else is out here with them (she never recognises anyone on black ops missions, only Neji. Her best friend. Her _teammate_) know what's happened.

"Sakura is out with us, she'll be here, soon. Okay? Tenten? Just stay by me, okay?"

"No, I – I – Sakura is out with us? I didn't think that was where you were going with that," she says, doing her best to keep her voice light (like the sun, hidden by clouds, silver with water) as tears well in his eyes.

"Now isn't the time," he whispers, (horrified by the extent of her injuries, the blood pooling in her insides, everywhere it shouldn't), and she remembers that he might be a better fighter than her, and a lot better looking and everything, but he sidetracks, just as much as she does, and the distance between them dwindles a bit. So she says, gently.

"I might not have another now left." Just as a precaution. Even though the sameness brings her solace (Solace is another beautiful word. Soul Lace. Like what you wear to heaven. Presuming she makes it up to her namesake. Which might not happen, given the extended practical in the nature of karmic re(dis)tribution today has been. But isn't God (if there is a happy, enlightened prince up there, if It's up, or someone else, or somewhere else) meant to be compassion personified? She's only killed people she was ordered to, and most of them had it coming... Who knew though? She might yet live,) and she thinks Neji knows anyway.

"I can't – " he says, and she smothers the cough gurgling up inside of her, can't stand the thought that she might cough up blood on him, least of all now, when he's glittering like that. Then, because she _needs_ to sidetrack, she glances at his arm, seeing a thin stream of vibrant rich red rolling down to his wrist.

"You're _wounded_," she accuses, surprised when his face folds into frowny lines, when she shatters her soulace. "_Still._"

"Don't – " he pleads, sensing she's going to try to look after him, to get him to hold onto his chakra for himself. "Don't strain yourself Tenten."

It's interesting, watching him now. The colours are draining from her eyes, blackness steadily melting over her sight, so that the only things she can see with any clarity are his eyes, and his nose and his lovely strong mouth, and the shine of his lifeforce, pure and bright. Until it touches her, streams into her.

"I wanted to tell you." She says, ignoring his pleas to be quiet, to conserve her strength – it _is_ taking more effort than she thinks it should, to form these words, which is ironic and typical, because now, when she wants to say them so badly, they're hard to say. "How much you mean to me Neji,"

Reaching up with a hand that's tacky with her own blood is remarkably easy though, and she's glad that someone, or something, has decided to cut her a break. She runs her fingers against his cheek, startled by the scrape of stubble there (and the pain is coming back now, too. And she doesn't know which side this brings her closer to, too).

Her fingers are slick and calloused and covered in scars, and even though he is desperately afraid of what is happening, he moves his mouth, so that he can kiss her fingertips, and she smiles up at him, eyes sparkling, and hazy with distance, and he is grateful for his Byakugan, which means that he can afford to cry, and still see her, beautiful and broken, and still see the dimming light of her, flickering like a low candle, even as he tries to keep it burning.

"You're my teammate, Hyuga Neji. My bestest friend," she says, but her voice has thickened and he doesn't know if that means she is going to cry or…or…"But I'm tired, and solace isn't always enough."

A flare bursts up through the sky three miles away, lighting the world briefly green. The field hospital. Neji makes up his mind, as her eyes close. "I love you," she murmurs into his chest, as he begins to run. "And you look really beautiful in this weather…"

He doesn't speak, because he needs to save her, and to do that he needs to move as fast as he can, and hold her as gently as possible, so that he doesn't push the steel further into her body, or make it fly away in a gout of blood, and get her to Sakura as fast as he can. He has never tried the deals with god thing, doesn't entirely believe that lighting incense gets him into some higher power's good books, but now…

_Save her._ He prays. _Let me get there in time, and I'll change the world for you_.

But god only listens to people like Tenten, and Neji runs and prays and _can't_ lose her! Not even to someone who obviously deserves her so much more…

_If you can hear me, stay here,_ he urges instead, biting back a sob as he feels wetness against his chest. _Stay here and I'll go there. I'll tell you. Stay by me and I'll go there. _

Hoping his wildly beating heart will be enough for both of them.

_I love you oh god don't stay asleep oh god I love you oh GOD wake up! Tenten! wake up!_

The wind stinging his cheeks as he runs is cold, but Tenten is getting colder.

_I still have so much left to tell you…_


End file.
